President Obama acknowledges need to address tensions; reports progress on Pakistan routes
President Barack Obama acknowledged that the United States and Pakistan need to work through challenges in their bilateral relationship as he reported ‘diligent’ progress towards resumption of Pakistani NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, closed since the November 2011 deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in cross-border airstrikes. President Obama, speaking after a meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari on the sidelines of the NATO summit on Monday, said a democratic, prosperous and stable Pakistan would be in America’s interest. “President Zardari shared with me his belief that these issues can get worked through. We didn’t anticipate that the supply line issue was going to be resolved by this summit. We knew that before we arrived in Chicago. But we’re actually making diligent progress on it,” Obama said in his hometown and the third largest American city.
